The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them
How about some accountability for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen?
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 24, 2021
If you want to know how the United States wound up with “government by stupid” one need only look no farther than some of the recent propaganda put out by members of Congress, senior military officers and a certain former president. President George W. Bush, who started the whole sequence of events that have culminated in the disaster that is Afghanistan, is not yet in prison, but one can always hope.
Regarding the current crisis, former FBI special agent and 9/11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley cited Richard W. Behan who mused over “How perverse we have become. We chastise President Biden for a messy ending of the war in Afghanistan and fail to indict George Bush for its illegal beginning.” She then observed, in her own words on Facebook, “So Rehabilitated War Criminal Bush can maintain his legacy as stalwart statesman as he cutely dances with Ellen DeGeneris and Michelle Obama on television screens. Washington is just a big fact-free political show where the blame game winners are the best manipulators.”
I would add to that the hubris of the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the tower of an aircraft carrier as Bush, wearing a flight suit, inaccurately announced victory and an end of combat in Afghanistan, presumably so he could focus on his new war in Iraq. As the Taliban had not attacked or threatened America, had no means of doing so, and were even willing to turn over “their guest” Osama bin Laden to US justice after the bombing of the USS Cole in late 2000, they were hardly a formidable foe. The Bush Administration refused the offer to surrender bin Laden on four occasions before 9/11 and once more five days after the attack because it wanted a war. Given all of that backstory, what Bush and his posse of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Tenet, Feith, Powell and Libby did was indisputably a war crime. And they followed up with fake intelligence to justify a second war against Saddam Hussein, who had also sought to avoid war by offering to go into voluntary exile. The Nuremberg tribunals considered aggressive war against an unthreatening nation to be the ultimate war crime. That would make it an ultimate war crime times two, not to mention the killing of civilians and torture that went along with it. And President Barack Obama added to that toll by subsequently destroying an unthreatening Libya. Unfortunately, many of those war criminals from the Bush and Obama cliques who are still alive are sitting fat and pretty in retirement or in lucrative private sector positions while the only ones who have been punished are the whistleblowers who tried to stop the madness.
George W. Bush is not particularly good at apologies so it is not surprising that he did not deliver one regarding the war he unnecessarily started and even more unnecessarily prolonged through the US occupation. In his view, the US should now remain in Afghanistan and he claims to be worrying about what will happen to Afghan women in particular and to the growing number of refugees, who he opines should be allowed to enter the United States. His statement includes a tip of the hat to the armed forces: “Many of you deal with wounds of war, both visible and invisible… And some of your brothers and sisters in arms made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. Each day, we have been humbled by your commitment and your courage. You took out a brutal enemy and denied Al Qaeda a safe haven while building schools, sending supplies, and providing medical care. You kept America safe from further terror attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will always honor your contributions.”
The delusional Bush makes it all sound like a mission of mercy which inter alia destroyed a ruthless enemy preparing to strike and kept America free of terror, none of which is true but it certainly sounds nice. But what is really interesting is how the fall of Afghanistan is being used by some to hype Bush’s war on terror, making the case that it is now more important than ever to strengthen US counterterrorism efforts. Which is another way of saying, “keep the cash flowing!” Those who have a vested interest in the war on terror are warning that the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan has raised concerns relating to a possible resurgence of terror groups that might once again use the country as a home base. The frequently wrong on every issue General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that “the United States could now face a rise in terrorist threats from a Taliban-run Afghanistan.”
Of course, if that were the case, Afghanistan might well face a bout of heavy strategic bombing by the United States, so there is not exactly an incentive for them to do something that provocative. Nor do they have the resources to act outside their own borders and they presumably would not welcome any of their “guests” provoking another US invasion.
Milley’s dumb comments on Afghanistan, to include the astonishingly wrong claim that US intelligence did not report in extenso the sorry state of the Afghan Army and the imminent collapse of the government, demonstrate that ignorance on major issues relating to foreign policy is not limited to those who call themselves Republicans. Secretary of State Tony Blinken insists that the retreat from Kabul is not a replay of Saigon, nor were the withdrawal plans, such as they existed, “botched.” Word in Washington is that Blinken will be the designated fall guy for the disaster to protect his boss.
Apart from the Afghanistan fiasco, stupid extends to how the government operates, particularly in Congress. In a recent memo to supporters and constituents Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who heads the Senate Intelligence committee described his top priorities. Three of them are quite interesting. They are: “(1) Root out anti-government extremism, including the white nationalist militias who participated in the January 6th insurrection at our Capitol; (2) Rebuild intelligence community agencies and departments that were understaffed and under-resourced in the previous administration, and (3) Depoliticize our intelligence-gathering apparatus, so these tireless and patriotic public servants can stay above the partisan fray and focus on their jobs: defending the American homeland.”
Enough has been said about the Democratic Party’s obsession with putting white Americans in their proper place, which is some deep hole where they can be ignored and berated as necessary. Purges are already taking place at the Pentagon and at the Justice and Homeland Security Departments. But Warner’s stated “priority” to engage in the rebuilding of an intelligence community that has seen its budget grow year after year comes as somewhat of a surprise. Perhaps it needs the extra cash to root-out those pesky whites. And finally, “depoliticizing” intelligence gathering has to be something of a joke, coming as it does from the party that did the most to politicize it in the first place under President Barack Obama working hand-in-hand with the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to promote the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. I suppose Senator Warner does not see the party in power using the CIA, NSA and FBI to discredit an opponent and destroy his campaign as politicization. Or you can always blame it on the Russians.
All in all, we have had a fine team working in harmony to protect the American people. Hopefully the time they spend in prison somewhere down the road will not discourage them and they will emerge with their brilliant insights fully intact. With leaders like Bush, Milley, Blinken and Warner, what could possibly go wrong?
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Florida governor DeSantis slams AP over ‘baseless conspiracy theory’ article about Covid-19 treatment
RT | August 23, 2021
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has lit into AP over a “partisan smear piece” about his promotion of a Covid-19 treatment endorsed by the White House, and the agency’s complaints of ‘harassment’ when his staff pushed back on it.
“I assumed your letter was to notify me that you were issuing a retraction of the partisan smear piece you published last week. Instead, you had the temerity to complain about the deserved blowback that your botched and discredited attempt to concoct a political narrative has received,” DeSantis wrote in a letter to the agency, which he made public on Monday.
The Republican governor described the AP story, published on August 17, as a “baseless conspiracy theory” with an “inflammatory headline” that might cause some Floridians to decline life-saving treatment, even though “the public’s trust in corporate outlets like the AP is at historic lows.”
“This is what happens when you decide on the headline and narrative before you begin reporting. The corporate media’s “clicks-first, facts-later” approach to journalism is harming our country.”
“Was it worth it?” DeSantis asked at the end.
The AP article revolved around Democrat outrage that DeSantis was promoting Regeneron – a monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid-19 – because the CEO of a hedge fund that has a financial interest in its maker has donated to the governor’s campaign.
The trouble with that narrative is that the treatment has also been endorsed by health experts and even the current administration. In a press conference on August 12 – days before the AP story – the White House “racial equity in health” adviser Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith said that the Biden administration had deployed “surge teams” to promote the drug in hard-hit US states.
The AP story even noted that experts agreed with DeSantis and that Regeneron has been “shown to cut rates of hospitalization and death by roughly 70%” if given within 10 days of initial symptoms. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who tested positive for the virus after being fully vaccinated on the same day the DeSantis hit-piece came out, said he was taking the drug and has since recovered.
When DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw tweeted about the “baseless” headline and called out both the writer and his editors, AP complained to Twitter that their reporter was being subjected to “harassment” and “bullying.” Pushaw’s account was locked for 12 hours.
“You cannot recklessly smear your political opponents and then expect to be immune from criticism,” DeSantis told AP, adding that he stood by his staff and their work.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has written previously about the phenomenon of corporate outlets labeling any criticism as bullying, commented that AP’s “whining” is part of a trend that “just seems like a cynical tool to place them off limits from critique.”
DeSantis and Abbott, both Republicans, have found themselves in the crosshairs of corporate media outlets over their opposition to lockdowns as well as to mask and vaccine mandates – though both have promoted voluntary vaccinations, and DeSantis has prioritized the elderly, as the highest-risk population. The White House has singled them out as “standing in the way” of its Covid-19 policies.
DeSantis has openly rejected the lockdown strategy as “Faucism” – after Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and a corporate media darling – and publicly stated his opposition to Florida becoming a “biomedical security state” and mandating vaccine passports like New York City.
Shortly after making the AP letter public, DeSantis announced that two more monoclonal antibody treatment centers will be opening in Alachua and St. Lucie counties on Tuesday, with the capacity of treating 300 patients per day, seven days a week. They join similar sites in 14 other counties across Florida.
Dr Peter McCullough, Louisiana House Oversight Hearing on Monday, August 16, 2021
HealthFreedomLouisiana | August 23, 2021
Dr Peter McCullough offers expert testimony to the LA House Oversight Hearing on Monday, August 16, 2021.
Israel’s Secret Arsenal: It’s Not So Secret Anymore
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 19, 2021
Few Americans are aware of the fact that no U.S. government official, to include congressmen, can in any way mention or discuss Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which is estimated by some observers to consist of as many as 200 tactical nuclear weapons which can be delivered on target by air, land or sea. The prohibition is spelled out in a Department of Energy “classification bulletin” graded Secret, which was issued on September 6, 2012 and bears the file number WPN-136. The subject line reads “Guidance on Release of information Relating to the Potential for an Israeli Nuclear Capability.” It would be interesting to learn exactly how the text of the memo reads, but in spite of repeated attempts to obtain a copy under the Freedom of Information Act, the entire body of the document is completely blacked out.
What is known in that the memo is basically a gag order, presumably issued by the Barack Obama Administration to block any official from making a comment that might be interpreted to mean that the federal government recognizes that Israel has nuclear weapons. The silence over the Israeli arsenal dates back to an agreement made by President Richard Nixon with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. In its most recent manifestation, President Barack Obama, when asked if he knew of “any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons,” responded “I don’t want to speculate.” He was, of course, lying.
The bulletin’s first known victim was Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear policy specialist James Doyle who in 2013 wrote a sentence suggesting that Israel had a nuclear arsenal. It appeared in an article entitled “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?” which had been security cleared by Los Alamos and appeared in the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. An unknown congressional staffer demanded a review and Doyle had his home computer searched before being fired.
Israel, as is so often the case, gets a free pass on what is for others criminal behavior. Its nuclear program was created by stealing American uranium and weapons technology. Preventing nuclear proliferation was in fact a major objective of the U.S. government when in the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy learned that Tel Aviv was developing a nuclear weapon from a CIA report. He told the Israelis to terminate their program or risk losing American political and economic support but was killed before any steps were taken to end the project.
Israel accelerated its nuclear program after the death of President Kennedy. By 1965, it had obtained the raw material for a bomb consisting of U.S. government owned highly enriched weapons grade uranium obtained from a company in Pennsylvania called NUMEC, which was founded in 1956 and owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro, head of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Zionist Organization of America. NUMEC was a supplier of enriched uranium for government projects but it was also from the start a front for the Israeli nuclear program, with its chief funder David Lowenthal, a leading Zionist, traveling to Israel at least once a month where he would meet with an old friend Meir Amit, who headed Israeli intelligence. NUMEC covered the shipment of enriched uranium to Israel by claiming the metal was “lost,” losses that totaled nearly six hundred pounds, enough to produce dozens of weapons. Such was the importance of the operation that in 1968 NUMEC even received a private incognito visit from a top Israeli spymaster Rafi Eitan who later ran the spy Jonathan Pollard.
Also there was physical evidence relating to the diversion of the uranium. Refined uranium has a technical signature that permit identification of its source. Traces of uranium from NUMEC were identified by Department of Energy inspectors in Israel in 1978. The Central Intelligence Agency has also looked into the diversion of enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant and concluded that it was part of a broader program to obtain the technology and raw materials for a nuclear device for Israel.
With the uranium in hand, the stealing of the advanced technology needed to make a nuclear weapon, which is where Hollywood movie producer Arnon Milchan comes into the story. Milchan was born in Israel but moved to the United States and eventually wound up as the founder-owner of New Regency Films. In a November 25, 2013 interview on Israeli television Milchan admitted that he had spent his many years in Hollywood as an agent for Israeli intelligence, helping obtain embargoed technologies and materials that enabled Israel to develop a nuclear weapon. He worked for Israel’s Bureau of Science and Liaison acquisition division of Mossad, referred to as the LAKAM spy agency.
Milchan admitted in the interview that “I did it for my country and I’m proud of it.” He was not referring to the United States. He also said that “other big Hollywood names were connected to [his] covert affairs.” Among other successes, he obtained through his company Heli Trading 800 krytons, the sophisticated triggers for nuclear weapons. The devices were acquired from the California top secret defense contractor MILCO International. Milchan personally recruited MILCO’s president Richard Kelly Smyth as an agent before turning him over to another Heli Trading employee, future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for handling. Smyth was eventually arrested in 1985 but insofar as is known neither Milchan nor Netanyahu has ever been questioned by the FBI regarding the thefts.
Israel’s nukes are now in the news because of an Op-Ed that surprisingly appeared in the New York Times on August 11th written by Peter Beinart entitled “America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel’s Nukes.” Beinart wrote that “Israel already has nuclear weapons. You’d just never know it from America’s leaders, who have spent the last half-century feigning ignorance. This deceit undercuts America’s supposed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and it distorts the American debate over Iran. It’s time for the Biden administration to tell the truth.”
Beinart points out that the American public can hardly make an informed judgement regarding what should be done in the Middle East if it is uncertain whether Israel is a nuclear power or not, but one issue he does not discuss is the issue of money. IRMEP’s Grant Smith, who has been challenging the secrecy surrounding the Israeli arsenal, recently observed that “The Symington & Glenn provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC §2799aa-1: Nuclear reprocessing transfers, illegal exports for nuclear explosive devices, transfers of nuclear explosive devices, and nuclear detonations) forbid U.S. foreign aid to countries with nuclear weapons programs that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, absent required special procedures… But no member of Congress has taken up this issue — or even mentioned Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.”
Smith is frustrated by the reluctance of progressives in Congress, who have opposed recent additional $735 million in military aid to Israel permitting it to rearm after its assault on the Gazans, to ignore the gag order and raise the issue of the nuclear arsenal. He writes “It seems as though even these members of Congress, as well as the rest of the U.S. government, are abiding by this secret gag order when they could take action which would challenge the administration’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons and possibly stop $3.8 billion in taxpayer money from going to Israel.”
That the Energy Department document exists at all is recognition of the astonishing power of the Israeli Lobby over the U.S. government at all levels, particularly as it is intended to ignore or even negate other legislation passed by congress to combat nuclear proliferation. And the denial of what everyone knows to be true, i.e. that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, appears to all come down to the ability of the United States government to continue to reward a wealthy Israel with billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year. To suggest that the arrangement is nefarious would be to put it mildly, but it is more that that. It is criminal. Israel has been allowed to get away with massive espionage directed against the United States and the theft of material and technology while also since the 1970s being engaged in a conspiracy with the U.S. government that distorts America’s foreign policy, largely done to keep getting the billions of dollars that it is not entitled to receive under existing American law. It is shameful. Beyond that, it might be construed as treason.
This Week in the New Normal #3
OffGuardian | August 22, 2021
1. UNIVERSITIES PUNISHING UNVACCINATED STUDENTS
Universities in the United States are issuing fines to any students who refused to take the Covid “vaccine”, according to a report from Zero Hedge.
West Virginia Wesleyan College, announced a few weeks ago that it will fine any unvaccinated student $750. Whilst Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University will fine them $100 per week increasing in $25 increments (equal to $2250 for the first semester).
Not only that, but unvaccinated students will also be denied internet access. In the modern age, attempting to function in an academic institution without access to the internet, emails or digital learning resources is almost impossible. So this is essentially a mandate under any other name.
Some bigger colleges have already started putting full-on mandates in place.
Other campuses are instituting “testing fees” of over $1500, but only for the unvaccinated. This is in spite of the fact vaccinated people are capable of testing positive for Covid.
2. “THE GREAT JOBS RESET”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the big daddy when it comes to pushing out the Great Reset, it’s the brainchild of their Chairman Klaus Schwab after all, and this past week they have unveiled their latest project. It’s called the “Jobs Reset Summit”.
The summit discusses, among other things, the alleged “impact of the pandemic” on employment. Bemoaning the loss of an estimated 255 million full-time jobs from the global economy, without ever mentioning (naturally) that these job losses had nothing to do with Covid, and everything to do with lockdown policies which were never intended to stop the spread of any virus.
The most alarming position to come out of this summit, however, was definitely a tweet that stated:
Get your COVID-19 jab – or you could face consequences from your employer #COVID19 #JobsReset21
Clearly supporting the idea that unvaccinated people should face censure, or even termination, from their employers. Just like they did with their “You’ll own nothing and be happy” article, they deleted the tweet and re-titled the article after a somewhat negative reaction.
Fortunately, once something is on the internet, it’s there forever.
3. YET MORE CASHLESS SOCIETY BS
The march toward a cashless society continues apace. We’ve been told already that cash is bad for the environment, and also contaminated with germs and drugs. Now the press is simply treating the cashless future as a fait acompli
This week alone there are articles about how Brazil, and India, and Saudi Arabia will all be cashless in the near future. China isn’t far behind.
Forgettable Guardian columnists are writing faux nostalgia puff-pieces about missing cash when it’s gone. Parishes are ditching collection plates for QR codes.
It seems the argument phase is over, definitely over. And what brought that on? Well Covid, of course. Multiple publications have been more than clear that the “pandemic” produced a “the viral spread of cashless society” and that a “cashless society is closer thanks to corona”.
It seems the totally real (and not-at-all agenda-driven) pandemic has accidentally facilitated the rise of a highly controlling government policy, which was around years before “Covid” even existed.
Weird how many times that’s happened in the last 18 months.
4. NO TRANSPLANTS FOR THE UNVAXXED
This week hospitals in both the USA and Ireland have admitted to removing unvaccinated patients from the donor organ waiting list.
Beaumont Hospital in Ireland sent out letters recommending doctors remove all unvaccinated patients from the kidney transplant waiting list. Whilst a man in Washington state was told he would not be considered for a heart transplant as long as he declined the Covid jab. Other patients in the same hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center, are reportedly in the same position.
The good news is that the public outcry was so intense, that the Beaumont hospital was forced to reverse its decision within days of the story breaking. But this policy will not go away, and just become more covert as it spreads.
BONUS: CREEPY SPEECH OF THE WEEK
Whoever runs the corporate puppet that lives inside Justin Trudeau’s skin has clearly decided it’s time for him to shake his rather inneffectual image and try and become a forceful public speaker. In a “strongman” speech in the run-up to the Canadian elections, Trudeau worked himself into a frenzy on vaccination:
“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, that’s your choice. But don’t think you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people and put them at risk!”
A tip for the future though – if you’re going to have the blandest man in the world try and excite a crowd, give him more than 80 people to work with. That said, however poorly delivered and however lukewarm the reception, the sentiment itself is very unsettling. Full on segregation in Canada. As someone remarked to us on Telegram, “instead of the back of the bus, it’s now no bus at all.”
IT’S NOT ALL BAD…
We’ve got the usual protests in France, Australia and all over the world to report this week. It’s also in the news that Denmark will be abandoning all Coronavirus measures from October first… but whether that’s truly good news remains to be seen.
However, this week’s main entry for INAB comes in the form of a music video that tells the whole story:
You can follow Lukas Lion on youtube or Instagram, and stream the song on Spotify, Apple music and other platforms.
We’d also remind everyone in the UK that next Saturday, the 28th August, is the Unite for Freedom “Freedom Carnival” protest in London (and maybe other cities around the country). You can also follow their telegram channel for updates.
***
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the Department of Homeland Security and Council on Foreign Relations dialling up the “terrorism threat”, or Australia’s new “national resilience centre”.
CBS News: The Taliban has capitalized on Climate Change!
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 21, 2021
CBS making it up as they go along!
Rural Afghanistan has been rocked by climate change. The past three decades have brought floods and drought that have destroyed crops and left people hungry. And the Taliban — likely without knowing climate change was the cause — has taken advantage of that pain.
While agriculture is a source of income for more than 60% of Afghans, more than 80% of conflicts in the country are linked to natural resources, according to a joint study by the World Food Programme, the United Nations Environment Program and Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency. In 2019, Afghanistan ranked sixth in the world for countries most impacted by climate change, according to the Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index.
Over the last 20 years, agriculture has ranged from 20 to 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP, according to the World Bank. The country is famous for its pomegranates, pine nuts, raisins and more. However, climate change has made farming increasingly difficult.
Whether from drought or flood-ravaged soil, farmers in the region struggle to maintain productive crops and livestock. When they cannot profitably farm, they’re forced to borrow funds to survive. When Afghans can’t pay off lenders, the Taliban often steps in to sow government resentment.
“If you’ve lost your crop and land or the Afghan government hasn’t paid enough attention [to you] then of course, the Taliban can come and exploit it,” said Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.
The Taliban has capitalized on the agricultural stress and distrust in government to recruit supporters. Alam said the group has the means to pay fighters more, $5-$10 per day, than what they can make farming.
“[Farmers] fall into choices. That’s when they become prey to people who would tell them, ‘Look, the government is screwing you over and this land should be productive. They’re not helping you. Come and join us; let’s topple this government,’” said Nadim Farajalla, director of the climate change and environment program at the American University of Beirut.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-taliban-strengthen/
Back in the real world:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
‘Deny and accuse somebody else’: FBI told informant in Michigan governor ‘kidnap’ plot to slander another man
RT | August 17, 2021
A text from an FBI agent instructed an informant in the alleged militia plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to delete messages and shift blame onto another man, casting further doubt on the already doubtful case.
Five people are currently awaiting trial on federal charges that the “Wolverine Watchmen” militia they supposedly belonged to wanted to kidnap the Democrat governor. The FBI announced the plot and arrested them in October 2020, shortly before the US election.
In a court filing last week the attorney for one of them sought text messages from FBI special agents Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, citing an exchange with one of the informants, identified only as “Dan.” A screenshot of it appeared online on Tuesday.
“Be sure to delete these,” the agent – allegedly Impola – tells ‘Dan,’ and later instructs him to deflect accusations of being an FBI informant. “Best thing to do is deny and accuse somebody else,” the agent texted, naming a man who wasn’t charged in the plot.
The text messages were cited in a filing by Michael Hills, an attorney representing one of the five defendants, Brandon Caserta. The FBI instructing their paid informant “to lie and paint an innocent citizen as an undercover federal agent” to an alleged domestic terrorist militia leader “casts a dark shadow over the credibility of this investigation,” Hills wrote in a court filing, as quoted by the local outlet MLive on Sunday.
‘Dan’ was “at the center of all activity” and recruited other individuals to join the alleged conspiracy, so the defense is demanding his text messages for purposes of arguing entrapment and as “evidence of government methods and tactics,” Hills wrote.
His colleague Christopher Gibbons, who represents Adam Fox, another defendant in the case, wrote that FBI informants “were originators of the criminal design in this case, to the extent that a ‘design’ ever existed.”
Last month, BuzzFeed published a lengthy investigative report – citing court filings, transcripts and interviews – showing that informants played a “far larger” role in the alleged plot than was previously known. The FBI relied on a dozen Confidential Human Sources (CHS) or Undercover Employees (UCE), almost as many as the actual members of the ‘Wolverines.’
Eight alleged militiamen have been charged under Michigan terrorism statutes, while six were slapped with federal charges. One, Ty Garbin, has since pleaded guilty to the kidnap conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing. Caserta, Fox, Barry Croft, Daniel Harris and Kaleb Franks are being held in jail ahead of the October 12 trial in Grand Rapids.
Assistant US Attorney Nils Kessler, who is prosecuting the case, has argued that the defendants were “predisposed to join the kidnapping and explosive conspiracies, and therefore will not be able to prove entrapment.”
The unraveling “plot” has prompted some critics – such as conservative lawyer and filmmaker Mike Cernovich – to accuse the FBI of engaging in a “disinformation campaign directly attacking democracy.”
Israel’s Lawyer Speaks Up
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 17, 2021
America’s foreign policy is a funny thing, except for the fact that it is no laughing matter. Given the recent sentencing of whistleblower Daniel Hale for revealing to the media that the US military’s drone program kills innocent civilians including many children 90% of the time, one has to wonder what the “humanitarian” Joe Biden Administration is up to. Hale will presumably serve 45 months in a federal prison though the actual time in the slammer might be closer to 18 months if he behaves and submits to counseling.
Biden’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama was equally a plague on whistleblowers while also attacking a non-threatening Libya and Syria and overthrowing an elected government in Ukraine, so one has to suspect that there must be something in the Democratic Party’s DNA that induces megalomania. Or maybe there is a hallucinogenic chemical additive in the White House’s water supply, secretly placed by those damned Russians, which produces delusions of grandeur.
The central problem is that for the federal government in Washington, just killing people is not per se a crime as long as it is “bad” people being killed. As long as some government approved procedure is adhered to, it is apparently an intrinsic right of the United States to go to some faraway country that does not threaten America and with which the US is not at war and kill someone in response to some vaguely stated policy. That is what the Global War on Terror backed up by the Authorization to Use Military Force is all about. No one in the government is ever punished for killing people, even including Obama’s offing of American citizens like the Awlaki father and son, droned to death in Yemen. Indeed, within recent memory the only two soldiers who were imprisoned for war crimes in Afghanistan were pardoned subsequently by Donald Trump.
Joe Biden certainly is doing the long overdue right thing by virtue of his withdrawal from Afghanistan and through his agreement to bring home all American combat troops from Iraq by the end of the year. But what about Syria, a continuing US presence for which there is no justification at all in the form of any threat to American interests beyond a contrived argument that President Bashar al-Assad must go to make way for “democracy”?
Indeed, one might argue that the belligerent impulse that has prevailed driven by the so-called neocons and neoliberals persists in the Biden Administration. The top three officers in the State Department are Zionists, one of whom, Victoria Nuland, was the architect of the overthrow of the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovich in 2013. The shift by the neocons to the Democratic Party could have been foreseen as many leading figures in the movement did not trust Donald Trump to be belligerent enough and rallied against him behind the #NeverTrump banner. And one should recall that the neocon movement’s founders were hardline and pro-Israel Democrats, several, including the notorious Richard Perle, serving on the staff of Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington back in the 1970s.
The transition to a neoconnish foreign policy has also been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, largely due to “foreign interference” being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016. Given their mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have also now opened wide to the stream of neocon-ish self-proclaimed foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to US national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum are favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s resignation last November. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a regular columnist for The Washington Post together with Max Boot, while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC.
The fundamental unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. As a result, the leitmotif of the neocon movement has consisted of its repeated calls for the United States to attack Iran. Every major Jewish foundation that expresses foreign policy views sees Iran as the enemy and that viewpoint has also prevailed among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who have been corrupted by Israel Lobby money.
One never sees in the mainstream media any analysis of why and how the Iranians actually threaten the United States or a vital American interest, unless one defines protecting Israel as such. And on that issue, there has been no one more assiduous in “protecting Israel” within the US government that Dennis Ross, who is currently a counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Ross was a fixture in senior national security positions relating to the Middle East under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As an ardent Israel firster, Ross was dubbed “Israel’s lawyer” by colleagues and was once admonished in a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who interrupted him when he was arguing in extenso on behalf of Israel. She said that in the future when she wanted the Israel-Likud position from him she would ask for it. Ross is inevitably co-author of an Israel puff piece book “Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny.”
Ross has recently written an article for Bloomberg Opinion that demonstrates just how demented some high level Israel promoters are while also showing that there are no limits when it comes to advancing the perceived interests of the Jewish state. It is entitled “To Deter Iran, Give Israel a Big Bomb” with the subtitle that “The best way to ensure Tehran doesn’t gain the capability to make a nuclear weapon is for the US to empower its ally.”
Ross is not optimistic about the chances that the US will rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015, which Donald Trump, in a major pander to Israel, withdrew from in 2018. Indeed, Ross has been against the agreement since the git-go, parroting the Israeli argument that it was a diversion whereby Iran would be able to secretly develop a weapon. The Biden Administration, led by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his deputy Wendy Sherman, have persisted in in their drive to add new restrictions to expand the agreement, including restraining Iran’s alleged threatening behavior in the region and its ballistic missile program.
Ross’s article was written before the recent drone attack on an Israeli-managed tanker in international waters off Oman. Both Washington and Jerusalem have attributed the incident to Iran with little in the way of evidence and coordinated their response, demanding that the United Nations take action. Biden has sent the CIA Director William Burns to Israel for “discussions” and both he and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have also independently promised an appropriate harsh response, so Ross is almost certainly right that there remains little common ground for a renewal of the JCPOA. That should please the Israeli government and its powerful domestic lobby in the US. It also suggests that the attack itself might have been an Israeli “false flag” to bring about that result and possibly trigger an American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
But Ross goes well beyond tit-for-tat responses to presumed Iranian actions and wants to see something more decisive. He argues that “With negotiations paused until a new hardline administration takes office in Tehran, the chances of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal anytime soon are not bright. Moreover, even successful talks might not stop Iran’s leaders from pursuing nuclear weapons. The Biden administration needs to find a better way to deter them.”
Ross concludes that “If the US cannot persuade Iran to temper such ambitions using carrots… the Biden administration… must make the costs of pursuing a threshold capability far clearer [by] providing Israel the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound mountain-buster, as some in Congress have advocated. Such a weapon could be used to destroy Fordow, the underground Iranian enrichment facility, as well as other hardened nuclear sites… Being prepared to provide Israel with such a fearsome weapon and leasing the B-2 bomber to deliver it would send a powerful message. The Iranians may doubt whether the US would follow through on its threats; they won’t have any trouble believing the Israelis will.”
Such a move would be seen by Ross and others in the administration as an inducement for Iran to surrender on all issues at the current negotiations to restore JCPOA taking place to in Geneva. It would send a signal that the US is “serious.” On the contrary, however, one might argue that providing the Israelis with such a devastating weapon and also the means of delivering it is a green light for the new Israeli government to do something completely reckless to establish its own bona fides on national defense without any regard for existing American interests.
The Ross proposal is yet another indication that both Democrats and Washington in general have become completely unprincipled and even unhinged players on the world stage, prepared to lash out in all directions with threats and bombs and unprepared to deal with other nations with even a modicum of respect. Dedicated Israel firster Dennis Ross is one of the worst of these denizens of the dark side of Washington, but he is far from alone. His desire to “protect Israel” by giving it the means to start a major regional war that would likely escalate to include direct US involvement is insane to say the least but one has to believe that his suggestion for what to do about Iran is being read in the White House and State Department and taken seriously. That such an option could be considered at all is a measure of just how “rogue” our nation has become.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Facebook suspends news outlet for reporting on latest Hunter Biden story
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 17, 2021
In the midst of the most recent Hunter Biden scandal, Facebook has removed some posts about the story and temporarily suspended a news outlet for reporting on it.
It seems to be perfectly obvious that Facebook would censor on behalf of the President’s son as they’ve done it before.
Facebook had initially prevented the spread of a bombshell exposé written about Hunter during the 2020 election. It was that exposé that disclosed what happened to Hunter’s previously missing laptop and raised questions about Biden’s business dealings.
Social media platforms began to delete mentions of the story and shut down accounts that reported on it.
However, in this new scandal, Facebook seems to be running to Hunter’s defense again.
Biden was caught on video with an alleged prostitute in a video published by the British newspaper Daily Mail, describing how Russian drug traffickers may be blackmailing him over a stolen laptop (not the one described in the initial New York Post article).
The video then shows Hunter alleging that there are possibly incriminating videos of him “doing crazy fucking sex” on the laptop but showed no nudity.
Facebook took down The Western Journal’s coverage of the controversy from its platform on Thursday. Amidst all the action, The Western Journal was also barred from streaming on the platform for the next 30 days.
Despite being highly edited to hide the identity of the alleged prostitute, the video, according to Facebook, appears to be in violation of Facebook’s “standards on adult sexual exploitation.”
Certain New York Post and Daily Mail stories also appear to have been subject to Facebook restrictions relating to their coverage of the controversy. When some attempted to share those stories in Messenger, they are prompted with an error notice that reads, “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”
From Western Digital :
“Now, if Facebook banned the video in an attempt to protect the woman shown, that argument could be reasonable. After all, by filming a video of her nude and allegedly paying her for sex, it can certainly be argued that Hunter Biden was sexually exploiting her.
However, if that truly was Facebook’s intent, there was no need to restrict The Western Journal’s coverage of the scandal, given that the woman’s identity is unknown and her face and body are blurred out throughout the entire video.”
Escape from New York: Mayor Decrees Vaccine Mandate for All Businesses, Venues
21st Century Wire | August 17, 2021
New York City is the latest casualty in the current wave of fascism sweeping through the major western countries.
This week, the Mayor of New York declared his to be the first major city in the United States to mandate mandatory vaccines for all indoor facilities and businesses, including all entertainment venues, gyms, pools, indoor dining, cafes, bars, museums, and retail outlets. All of these premises will soon be ‘off-limits’ for any employees and customers who refuse to be injected with the unlicensed experimental GMO ‘vaccine’ gene-jab.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, declared his unprecedented unitary rule over the city, bypassing the normal democratic process by signing an executive order which is said to begin on Tuesday, August 17th with enforcement of his decree coming into full effect on Monday, September 13th.
In true Orwellian fashion, he has named this new medical apartheid regime the “Key to NYC.”
De Blasio is threatening harsh punishments for any resident who defies his executive diktat, with fines starting at $1,000 for failure to comply with his vaccine mandate, and with fines that will increase progressively for repeat offenses. The Mayor has not yet specified whether or not punishments will include arrest and imprisonment for any repeat offenders.
“We made a decision a few weeks ago, the whole ball game is vaccination and once you make that kind of profound strategic decision you throw everything you got at it,” said De Blasio during the press announcement.
Stating he will only accept full compliance from the city’s 8 million residents, he warned, “We’re not interested in half measures.”
The Mayor openly admitted that his decree is especially targeting young people in their 20s and 30s, stating that he intends to coerce them into accepting the experimental COVID injection, as they are the primary target demographic “who needs to be convinced that it’s so powerful to be vaccinated.”
De Blassio went on to say, “New Yorkers, we love our arts, culture, entertainment, restaurants…. knowing that is the way you connect with these things through vaccination – is going to move people to get vaccinated.”
De Blasio then announced he intends to run a multimillion dollar propaganda campaign, paid for by city taxpayers, designed to condition residents to comply with his new executive decree.
Technocrats in the city’s public health coterie also added that they would pursue serious fraud charges against anyone caught using a fake vaccination card.
“A fake vaccination card constitutes fraud and will be prosecuted as fraud by that individual,” said Dr. David Chokshi, NYC Health Commissioner.
Chokshi added that a special line has been set up to report on any residents suspected of faking their proof of vaccination, warning, “We will have recourse for people to report if they are encountering fake vaccination cards, both at the city level through 311 as well as through the state attorney general’s office.”
Businesses and venues will be expected to ask members of the public for both proof of vaccination along with a photo ID ‘to prove they are who they say they are.’ … Full article
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Book Review
New paperback: Butchered by “Healthcare”
Lies are Unbekoming | October 20, 2026
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
Butchered by “Healthcare” is available on Lulu now.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iraq shuts key border crossing with Iran under US pressure: Report
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- EU sending ‘biased’ observers to interfere in Serbian election – president
- White House envoy declares kinetic action against Yemen ‘fruitless’
- Ukraine deployed thousands of microdrones in Iraqi Kurdistan: Tasnim
- Iran calls for emergency UNSC meeting over Trump’s ‘brazen’ bomb talk, Israeli threats
- Iranian sources reveal details of Russia-China Hormuz proposal
- Plan for more US-Israel integration puts our military tech at risk
- Another Round Against Iran Will Break What Is Left of the Gulf
- SVR Report on Ukraine’s Mexican Drug Gang Links Could Pressure Zelensky, Won’t Change US Policy
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
